I find that I was seven when I moved here and have but faint
recollections of home. It was quite small: two rooms, I think, a
kitchen and a drawing room, but, whenever I try to ascertain how one
part of the house led to another, I become confused. There was a bed in
a certain corner which I am certain was mine and a rather narrow path
that I often took and which led to another room. It is difficult to be
sure that the other room was also in my house. The mental image I have
of the house, on occasion, becomes gory and I hallucinate, hearing
people screaming as if they were on fire.
On the way here, Father, I remember, kept telling me that I would feel
lonely at first but would get used to everything soon. What I remember
of those two or three days when he and I stayed here—after which he
left me to return only on two occasions, both short visits and within
the first three months—is that he was quite upset and very sympathetic
toward me. Several times he mentioned, or at least alluded to, his
unwillingness to leave me here; he left me here all the same. Whenever
a classmate spoke highly of his father, I would be reminded of mine.
One of them even told me what an unworthy son I was being to my father,
but Father was a scoundrel.
Although I have often been reminded of them and Grandmother, I do not
actually resent the estrangement; for I now have made good friends with
Solitude and should be deeply pained if I were taken there again. Even
this friendship started only a year ago, when I stopped going to
school. In school I had, I can safely say, many friends, among them
also my two pet dogs. Unfortunately, none of those two dogs is alive.
But they really had no right to live longer than they did. At first
glance, dogs seem to be faithful and thankful creatures and attract our
sympathy. The truth, however, is that, to them, humans are of interest
only as sources of food, and anybody who gives them food becomes their
friend. Cats on the other hand are rightly suspicious of us no matter
what we do; they may accept food from us but are none the friendlier.
It is then a matter of individual judgement whether superficial love
and fulsome gratitude and its expression, instead of polite thanking
implied in the ungrudging acceptance of them, are the right return for
alms.
The past one year has given me more free time than my little hobbies can
help me while and the reason for my writing this account is partly my
craving some activity and partly my desire to put my thoughts together
so that they make sense. I am naturally led to wonder what is happening
around me. Why I was sent here is a mystery. And that I have been
locked up in this room while others continue to go to school is no less
puzzling.
I suspect that in reality I recovered from both changes—leaving home and
leaving school—rather quickly, even if old memories haunt me; perhaps
they were figuring on my quick recovery, whoever took these decisions.
When Father said I would be living here alone without him, in a new
school and a new home, I had thought that adapting to the new
conditions would be difficult, but it is hardly an exaggeration that I
thought of home only because I felt I was supposed to miss it. The days
would go smoothly, there being nothing to impart any sense of longing
and no poignant memories to be evoked, and when after a considerable
length of time I would think about them I would feel obliged to feel
lonely—to oblige Father, that is.
The same thing I can say of the expulsion from school a year ago: they
informed me of it and gave me this room in the adjacent building, which
tallies with my conception of a prison cell. For two days, I remained
preoccupied with the thought of, and fear of, the future and the
emptiness it would undoubtedly have; only two days because I realized
in good time that the only frightening consequence of that severance
from social life was dread of consequences. One day was followed by
another and that by another. As I sat grappling with the new situation,
time fled. Also, a plainclothes doctor would come every day (the same
person every time) and engage me in aimless conversation for an hour,
usually, and sometimes more. But he stopped coming after about five
months, when I think he thought I had recovered sufficiently from the
change.
All was going well: I had forgotten home, my old room, school, and
everything past. If it had continued like that, I would not have
written this; but it did not. The day before yesterday, the attendant
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